


Stray Puzzle Pieces

by plumadesatada



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Egypt, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, will add more as i will prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:36:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumadesatada/pseuds/plumadesatada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for various prompts I might get on tumblr. Currently filling for the <a href="http://plumadesatada.tumblr.com/post/122729890023/au-mix-it-up-challenge">Mix-it-Up challenge</a>, where you send me three AUs and I integrate them into one fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There's a joke somewhere about denial and the Nile (but I’m too busy changing history to make it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ancient Egypt, Time Travel, Assassins AU
> 
> Tony likes to fund expeditions in Egypt, so long as he gets to visit them. One day, a dig caves in on him.  
> He wakes up in the Bronze Age.

When Tony woke, it wasn’t with a mouthful of dirt. There was no pile of rocks crushing him to the ground. The light at the mouth of the cave was not obscured by fallen debris.

Which was weird, because he distinctly remembered the ceiling of the tomb caving in on him as he ran out, pushing him down. Remembered trying to dig his way through rocks, breathing in loose dirt. Remembered the suffocating darkness…

He pushed himself up, groaning, and took stock of his situation. His head flashlight was broken. Breathing hurt. He was covered in dust and bruises. The hieroglyphs on the walls around him looked… freshly painted.

And the sarcophagus he’d sneaked in to see wasn’t there.

Huh.

Deciding Bruce and his team of Egyptologists were obviously playing a prank on him, he grabbed his backpack and limped his way out, already imagining the chew-out of epic proportions he was going to give them. They could have just dressed as mummies or made noises or whatever; there was no need to engineer a cave-in on him. He could have died!

"Last time I fund this team," he declared as he crossed the threshold, hand thrown up against the glare of the sun.

The expected laughter didn’t come. Instead, the tip of something sharp poked him right in the Adam’s apple.

Tony looked down and found a bronze blade at his throat. He froze. His eyes followed the blade, travelled down the shaft of the spear, and then up the arm holding it.

There was a black dude, built like a mountain on steroids and wearing a loincloth and more eyeliner than K.I.S.S. would use in a year, glaring at him.

And did he mention the spear? Because it was very nearly drawing blood.

Tony did the only sensible thing a man in his situation might do: he raised his hands in the air and grinned charmingly.

* * *

Interrogation time was fun.

Lots of dudes in varying costumes yelled at him in turns. Of course, they were yelling in Egyptian—a language which, for all that Tony loved everything related to Ancient Egypt, he’d never bothered to learn beyond knowing that  _nefer_  meant  _beauty_ —so he just sat there and grinned like the clueless idiot he was. They also went through his belongings, puzzling over his StarkPhone—which was now basically a very high tech paperweight, what with there being no satellites, Internet, or even electricity—his bottled water, his strip of condom packets, his wallet, his salted crackers, his Kleenex, his flashlight, etc.

Did he say fun? He lied.

Sure, he got that they’d found him in a recently-built tomb for whoever was the current Pharaoh, that no one was supposed to  _be_  there, especially not a super-pale white-skinned dude who spoke four languages that hadn’t been invented yet and was very obviously not a slave working on said tomb. But they didn’t need to leave him tied-up for two days in a six-by-six clay room that smelled like piss and vomit. And they could have  _at least_ given him some fucking gruel.

So he escaped.

* * *

Living in Kemet when one’s skin color was unusual and one hardly understood a single word of the language turned out to be surprisingly easy once one managed to get to Thebes.

(He was sad to see his polarized Ray Bans go, but fair was fair, and people didn’t let other people hitch rides on the back of their carts for free. At least he still had his 50 spf sunscreen and his hat to combat the ridiculous heat.)

Getting to Thebes was bittersweet. On the one hand, he got to see a freshly-built Luxor and it was  _glorious_ ; on the other, it confirmed his fears that he really was in the past, somehow. On the  _other_ other hand, Thebes was enough of a cosmopolis that there were some people living there who spoke Greek.

Now  _there_  was a language he’d never thought he’d use unironically, but that was life for you. Sometimes it just opened a wormhole three thousand years into the past right under your feet, sometimes you ended up using a dead language you learned in high school to apply for a job in a smithy.

The guy asked him to demonstrate (or, rather, gestured at the tools with a condescending  _be-my-guest_  sort of raised eyebrows and leisurely crossed arms) and Tony basically wowed him by building a wind-up toy car. Considering it was the late Bronze Age and the dude had never seen anything like it… He hired Tony on the spot and even let him sleep on a mat in the shop.

Once he had a steady source of income and a kind-of home, and especially once he achieved some fame for his trinkets and merchants from as far as Giza started seeking him out, he got busy enough he could stop thinking about the life he’d left in the future.

* * *

Tony managed to live in Thebes almost one whole year before someone in the royal house was clued in on his ability with small mechanisms and how it could benefit, say, a military campaign. He was almost disappointed that it took them so long, but then again there was only word of mouth to carry news in this age, and the Pharaoh didn’t exactly hold court and listen to the peasants.

(Why was it  _always_  weapons? Why couldn’t it be jewelry for once?)

He was issued an  _offer_  to work in the royal smithy or whatever. He wasn’t listening. Of course, people couldn’t exactly say no to an offer from the god-made-flesh himself; but, then again, Tony Stark wasn’t  _people_.

He took the first boat he found in the harbor.

* * *

A year and four months later found him starting his life over yet again.

He’d been to Memphis, Cairo and Giza, enjoyed the sights (particularly the Great Pyramids gleaming golden in the sunset), finally given in to depression (being a stranger in a strange land with no hope of getting home took a while to get over), slowly worked his way out of it (by resolving to carve himself a new home in this era no matter what), gotten a girlfriend (a gorgeous woman with smiling dark eyes and artisan hands), broken up with said girlfriend (Dad didn’t approve of his Desert Flower marrying foreigners), and fled into the night again (Dad  _really_  didn’t approve, and neither did his friends).

With a small mob at his back, Tony did the only thing he could do: he fled yet again.

This time, though, he had one destination in mind.

Love hadn’t worked out for him so well, so he was going to do what he should have done from day one: if he couldn’t adapt himself to suit the past, he was going to change the past to suit  _him_.

* * *

The Library of Alexandria was surprisingly dust-free.

And busy. Ridiculously busy. Three people so far had knocked into him.

Well, maybe it was due to how he was standing practically in the middle of the main hall, too busy fanboying to be able to move. And who wouldn’t? He was standing right under  _the_  mythical collection of knowledge and science whose loss everyone had mourned.

And the best thing, the most  _exciting_  thing: Christianity wouldn’t happen to the world for another thousand years  _at least_ , so Tony was free to teach real science to a culture unpolluted by church-mandated bigotry.

Grinning widely and already making plans for printing press in his head, he took a step towards what seemed to be the Ancient Egyptian version of a front desk—

—and promptly collided with a freakishly tall dude carrying a pile of scrolls.

The scrolls flew everywhere.

“Fuck!” the man exclaimed, glaring at Tony. “Watch where you’re going, you bloody wanker.”

Tony, who had until that moment been preparing to help him pick up the scrolls, bristled. “Fuck off, you limey bastard.” Scoffing, he walked past the tall asshole.

…

Wait.

Eyes widening, Tony turned around and stared with his mouth open. “You—?”

The man kneeling on the floor with one hand over a roll of papyrus stood up, equally stunned. “Did you just—?”

Yup, still talking English.  

Tony forgot all about wounded pride and just threw himself at the stranger, enfolding him in a hug.

* * *

Loki—that was the name of the stranger from the library—turned out to be a pretty cool guy.

Also, a great winemaker.

He was thirty-eight or thirty-nine years old, depending on how you counted, and had been stuck in the past for about seven years. He wasn’t married and didn’t have children, and he had a fuckton of money. He lived in a house big enough to be a mansion by Egyptian standards, thanks to his wine being so popular among the nobles.

And he’d been dumped in this time in 1965.

“So, what were you doing in Egypt?” Tony asked, sipping beer. He wanted to know  _everything_  about this man, and not just because he spoke English. He’d been the first person to greet him without suspicion for a very, very long time.

Loki shrugged. “MI6 sent me to assassinate Nasser.” He watched Tony over the rim of his mug. When Tony said nothing, he continued. “I failed, hid in a cave for a night, and then came out to this.” He gestured vaguely around them, encompassing the entirety of Ancient Egypt.

Tony tried to remember who Nasser was from his history lessons. He failed; he’d never paid much attention in History. Probably some important communist, considering the time-frame. “Well, at least they didn’t catch you,” he said weakly. Assassin, huh. He’d had his fair number of run-ins with them.

“I guess I can’t complain.” Loki smile wryly. “I still have my rifle, though I ran out of bullets ages ago.”

Any other person would ask why Loki still had the rifle, but Tony still carried his cell phone with him wherever he went. He understood.

In the manner of Egyptians, Loki dipped a chunk of bread in his beer and ate it, chewing it pensively. The silence got too long, apparently, because he asked, “So, what brings you to Alexandria?”

Tony told him about his plans to go down in history as the father of science (Aristotle, stick  _that_  in your arrogant pipe and smoke it) and innovation, starting by building a printing press for the Library to copy more books. “I’m also thinking of Fordizing papyrus production. And making a computer, among several other innovations.”

Loki grinned widely, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Well, Mr. Stark, how about a deal? You agree to make me, and only me, an alembique so I can produce hard liquor, and you can live here as long as you want. I miss whiskey dearly.”

Tony laughed. “So long as I can drink as much I want, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

They drank to it like proper 20th century men.


	2. is that a microphone in your pocket? (wait, shit, i guess you really are happy to see me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Music Band, Arranged Marriage, Serial Killer AU
> 
> Loki's parents really should have had a background check done before arranging this marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Thor is the fiancé. Why? Because I hate Thor and I think it's a toss-up between him, Odin and Thanos for the title of "who was most abusive". 
> 
> This mini-story was brought to you by the devilish FoxyOwl.

Loki ran into the open garage at full speed. His ankle nearly gave under his weight, but he managed to get himself upright. He leaned against some messy shelves, gulping down air and nearly bent double with exhaustion.

“Dude, I appreciate the rush,” a voice said, “but you didn’t need to run here.”

Loki stopped breathing. Had he been found already?  _Why?_ Why hadn’t his stupid body lasted longer before giving out?

“Nobody else showed up,” the voice continued, “so I guess you are hired.”

“Oh, come  _on_ ,” another voice said, this one belonging to a woman, “you’re not even going to hear him?" 

A woman. Two people. 

 _Not Thor, then._ Slowly, Loki looked up, still hardly daring to believe his luck. Instead of his fiancé brandishing hammer with murder in his eyes, he found a band. 

The woman was sitting behind a set of drums. She had a lot of strawberry blond hair piled messily onto her head, a lot of makeup, and a nasty frown on her face. There was a black man holding an electric guitar, looking at Loki through narrowed eyes. Young man. Still filling out from the lankiness of puberty.

"Come on, Pepper, we need a singer and you know it,” the first voice said. It belonged to the last man, the one sitting behind a keyboard piano. He had shaggy brown hair and straggly facial hair that could be either a five-day shadow or his attempt at a beard. 

“Look at him, Tony,” the woman—presumably Pepper—said. “Do you really think he came for the audition? He looks like he saw the door opened and he wandered in to see what he could steal." 

Loki frowned. He knew he looked bad—his hair was tangled and matted with poor hygiene, his body gaunt from lack of food, the bags under his eyes dark like bruises, his clothes dirty and torn—but that was just… too much. "I didn’t,” he said, and his voice sounded rough to his own ears. “I needed to hide." 

"Hide?” the three of them said together, in varying degrees of disbelief. 

Loki nodded. He glanced outside and saw no traces of Thor. Had he managed to lose him? Returning to the present, he lifted the hem of his shirt and showed them his back.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” managed the black man. He put down the guitar and covered his mouth, eyes clenched shut. 

The white man—Tony?—and Pepper looked at each other and nodded, before getting up. Pepper grabbed the remote for the garage door and clicked it, while Tony went to a door between the shelves and opened it.

“Come in,” he said as the garage door came down, cutting them off from the glare of the sun outside. “You look like you need some hot chocolate.”


	3. Loser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fill for [this prompt](http://frost-iron.tumblr.com/post/125782859832/the-only-reason-popular-tony-stark-is-wooing-frost):
>
>> The only reason popular Tony Stark is wooing frost prince Loki is because of a dumb bet about getting into Loki's pants. When even getting Loki's attention turns out to be tougher than expected, it becomes a challenge for Tony, who considers himself an expert in the affairs of charming people into his bed. Gradually, Tony begins genuinely enjoying his time spent with Loki, as Loki warms up to Tony. Of course, right after they finally have sex, someone tells Loki about the bet.

_“You’re sure, right?” Tony asked for the eleventh time. He loomed over Loki, supporting his weight on one hand while the other held his cock pointed at Loki’s asshole. His breath was warm; his eyes, intense._

_Loki grinned up at him and tightened his legs around his boyfriend’s waist, hugging him with them. He had no doubt Tony would call the entire thing off on his word, or just as easily switch to blowjobs. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he murmured, reaching up to stroke Tony’s shoulders. “Do it, Loser.”_

_Tony gave him a long, glittering look and swooped down to kiss him, their lips smacking stickily. He pushed in slowly, gently, ready to pause at the first sign that Loki wanted to stop. He mouthed reassuring nothings into Loki’s cheek and jaw all the way._

* * *

It took Clint Barton precisely one glance at them at lunch to know they’d done the nasty.

“Oh my _goooood,_ ” he groaned, hands dragging down his cheeks like everything was terrible and the world was ending. He slumped sideways into Nat, who patted him mechanically on the head. “One more week. _Just one more week!_ ”

Loki popped the bendy straw into the juice box Tony’s butler had so thoughtfully packed with his lunch. “What’s with Barton today?” he asked Rogers, right before taking a sip.

Rogers froze in the middle of eating a cafeteria fry, so that the greasy stick hung limply from his hand mid-way to his mouth. “Uuuuuhhhhh,” he said, his eyes swiveling wildly between Loki, Tony and Clint. He swallowed spit, the gulp audible even from Loki’s spot on the far end of the table. “I… have no idea,” he lied, following that up with stuffing his mouth with the fry.

Everyone suddenly found something extremely interesting on their trays, because they all looked down and away from Loki.

Loki frowned slightly. They were keeping something from him, he just knew it.

“Don’t worry,” Tony said next to him, pressing his shoulder against Loki’s companionably. “Clint just realized he lost a bet.” He took out his own juice box and made a face. “I think we mixed up our lunches. This one is yours.” He waved the box at Loki, letting him see.

Peach juice. Tony _hated_ peach juice. Loki loved it.

Loki handed his OJ over without another word, knowing Tony wouldn’t be bothered that he had already taken a sip from it. They exchanged more spit in a kiss than what was gleaming on the tip of the straw. “What was the bet about?” he asked casually, more to fill the silence than because he actually cared.

The screech of metal chair legs on cheap ceramic floors drew their attention.

Bruce had stood up. He paused for a second as he discovered everyone looking at him, and then mumbled something about time-sensitive experiments and _would-you-look-at-the-time?_ before practically running out of the cafeteria.

“That reminds me,” Rogers said quickly, also standing up, “Coach wanted to ask me something. See you in History.” He grabbed his bag and followed Bruce.

One by one, Tony’s friends vacated the table, making up excuses that would have been plausible if they hadn’t been supposedly happening all at the same time.

Once everyone was gone, Loki shot Tony a look out the corner of his eye. _Now_ he was curious. “So, what _was_ the bet?”

Tony shrugged and reached out for Roger’s abandoned fries. “Remember that time you asked me why I was so insistent on dating you, and I kept changing the subject?”

“Yeah?” he said, expectantly, trying (and failing) not to guess what this was all about.

“Well.” Tony had the decency to blush. “That was the bet.” He shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “I was boasting about being seduce anyone I wanted, and he pointed at you and said that if I managed to get into your pants, he’d buy me the next Call of Duty.” He bit his lip. “Nat was the one to set up a time limit. The rest is history.”

Okay.

That explained a few things. Namely, why a boy he didn’t know anything about except that he was one of the popular kids and friends with the quarterback suddenly started leaving bad poetry in his locker, handing him flowers and asking him out; him, _Loki,_ with his acne and his braces and his noddle arms. It had taken Loki ages to believe it wasn’t some kind of prank, even after Tony had signed a paper stating it wasn’t.

Even after knowing, for certain, that Tony was an absolute _pig_ and actually _liked_ snacking on the bits of food caught in the metal when they kissed and popping Loki’s pimples like they were bubble wrap, he’d still wondered.

“Hey, Earth to Loki,” Tony called, waving his hand in front of Loki’s eyes. “Speak to me.”

Loki looked at him, noticing the worry in his eyes. The same worry that had been there last night every time Tony asked if he was sure, if he wanted to stop, if he wouldn’t rather get a nice BJ instead of going all the way… If Tony had only cared about winning a bet, he would have pressured Loki from the beginning; he wouldn’t have offered to take it slow thirteen times in one night, while looking at him with cow eyes and a faint smile on his lips the whole time.

“You know what I’m thinking?” Loki asked, grabbing one of Roger’s cold fries and holding it to Tony’s mouth.

Tony took it with his lips, kissing the tips of Loki’s fingers. “Mmm?” he hummed while he chewed.

Loki kissed him softly, enjoying the oily, salty taste of his lips. “I’m thinking I need to thank Barton.”

Laughing, Tony tugged him close by the waist and kissed him again.

* * *

_Tony came back from the bathroom with a wet towel._

_Loki was still all post-orgasmic puddle, lying on his back on the bed. He opened one eye when he felt the towel on his stomach, wiping him clean, and a goofy grin blossomed on his face. “Hey,” he purred, managing a little wave with his hand._

_“Hey there,” Tony greeted back, forgetting all about the cleaning in favor of leaning down and kissing Loki softly. When he broke the kiss, it was like something was pulling him back down, because he immediately kissed Loki again, one hand stroking through Loki’s hair. “How are you feeling?”_

_Something about that struck Loki as hilarious, because he started laughing and couldn’t stop. “I just lost my virginity!” he giggled, grabbing the towel from his chest and tossing it to the floor. “How do you think I’m feeling?” He patted the free spot on the bed invitingly._

_Tony lied down facing him, still staring at him like a besotted idiot. “Great?”_

_Grinning in agreement, Loki turned off the light and rolled into his side. He started counting._

_He didn’t even get to three before Tony spooned against him, one arm thrown around his waist. “Love you,” he murmured, his incipient facial hair scraping Loki’s neck nicely._

_Loki reached over his shoulder to stroke Tony’s hair. “I know, Loser.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg why is writing so hard ugh  
> seriously i think i've spent too much time not-writing i'm currently a thousand percent out of practise


End file.
